


A Single Square Moon

by VivaciousViscarian



Category: Original Work
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fantasy, Short One Shot, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VivaciousViscarian/pseuds/VivaciousViscarian
Summary: "It gets a little lonely, living by yourself.  Safe, she tells herself.  But lonely.  Beth is two hundred twenty-two years old.  Approximately. She clumsily adds another blob of clay so that the lump before her somewhat resembles a small humanoid form.  It slides wetly to the right slightly and she frowns, pursing her lips before slapping on another slab so that it evens out."





	A Single Square Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote for a fictional lit class assignment. We were limited to 10 pages and challenged to rewrite a fantasy world without typical happy ever after endings and have an example of an emotional crisis rather than a physical one. I was the only one in the class to write a F/F story and my peers would just kind a mumble under their breath when asked for peer editing comments. So I figured there was no harm in posting it here.  
> Originally it had a happy ending but I had to change it when told it was too cliche...But I'm kinda proud with how it turned out in this version too. I think I ended putting a bit too much of my own experience and emotions into it, so it's become a bit of a personal story as well. Please enjoy!

It gets a little lonely, living by yourself.  _Safe_ , she tells herself.  _But lonely_.  Beth is two hundred twenty-two years old.  Approximately. She clumsily adds another blob of clay so that the lump before her somewhat resembles a small humanoid form.  It slides wetly to the right slightly and she frowns, pursing her lips before slapping on another slab so that it evens out. 

“Let’s see, add a drop of blood...breath of soul…mm-hmm, got that.”  She dots two eyes on the head and smooths out where her grip has left indentations in the soft clay.  The final step is the naming. Beth twirls her muddied fingers around for a few second and contemplates what her companion’s name should be. “Peter?”

~*~*~

Eli is eight years old when she is taken to the castle.  The orphanage is delighted, one less mouth to feed and attitude to put up with.  Eli is less so. They stuff her into stockings and dresses, tug her blond hair until she feels like she’s about to become bald before they shove awful shoes on her feet that pinch her toes.  She thinks that servants must dress awfully fancy at the castle.  When they pull her into a huge room with a long, plush rug and pretty walls, her eyes trail up up up until they meet the eyes of the King himself.  Eli is a Princess now, they say. The first heir to the throne. She doesn’t understand at first when they thank her for embracing her duty and sacrifice for the country.  She is now the First Princess Eliza and the thought makes her chest swell up, her ego inflate, because she’s a Princess!  She will rise to the throne and be the best queen she can be, of course.

~*~*~

“Sorry, Peter.  I’m not much a sorceress, all I can really do is the basic stuff really,” Beth says, as Peter toddles around and attempts to pick up things with his slick, fingerless appendages.  He mostly succeeds in just making a mess, leaving streaks of wet clay in his wake.  Beth giggles when he manages to lift a spoon and turns to her as if for approval.  “Well done!”

It’s okay if Peter can’t talk.  He’s a very good listener.  Beth gathers him up in her arms and he pats her cheek gently, leaving a smudge of clay that feels cool against her skin.

~*~*~

Eli is eight years old when she learns that not all princesses live in pretty rooms with fluffy beds and nice dresses. Some sleep on itchy sacks by kitchen hearths and scrubs floors with soapy water that make their hands stiff and cold.  When she is nine, she learns that some princesses are not loved and that grown-up fists hurt just as much as when she wasn’t a princess.  Eli is ten years old when they tell her that every first heir will die at twenty-one, that the Royal family is devils cursed in exchange for continued prosperity, but that by sacrificing a worthless orphan like her, no Royal blood will be harmed. Eli is twelve when she decides that she’s had enough of being a loophole.

~*~*~

“You have a lovely garden.”

Beth flinches and peers up from beneath her wide straw hat, pausing to take in the child at her front gate.  It’s a girl, hair shorn so short she could be mistaken for a young boy if it wasn’t for her skirts.  But it’s a real human girl.  It’s been a long time since she’s even seen one.

“Are you the sorceress?” the girl asks, propping her elbows on the white, wooden posts. “They told me one lived deep in the woods but never exactly _how_ deep, so how am I to know?” 

“Y-yes. I am. A sorceress, that is,” Beth gently lowers the last seedling into the plot while trying to calm down her pounding heart.  As she stood and swiped at the damp dirt that clung to her clothes, Peter toddles out from behind her, holding his watering can with stubby clay fingers. 

~*~*~

Eli is twelve when she goes to find the sorceress that they say lives deep in the woods.  The stories always say that sorceress are frightening and eat children, but she is fairly thin so she thinks that the sorceress probably won’t bother with such a scrap of a meal.  She wonders if her nose is like a raven’s beak and her hands like gnarled claws, with remnants of her last bloody meal staining her sharpened teeth.  Eli wasn’t expecting to find a young woman with a slightly crooked nose and almond eyes with thick lashes, playing around with a clay doll.  Black hair like fine silk and not a tangled, matted mess.  A straw hat with a red ribbon instead of crown of will-o-whisps. Fairy tales are terrible at describing sorceresses she decides.

~*~*~

Beth has no idea how this could be happening.  It’s been over two hundred years since she’s seen a single human and now she’s finding them everywhere.  That girl is in the woods, she’s in the garden talking with Peter, she’s dropping by for tea, and now Beth has got more humans popping up in uniforms now with official looking seals and begging her for help to save a sick princess.  They’re asking her to come to a castle.  She doesn’t even remember there being a castle anywhere near here.

“If I can help, I suppose I will,” she tells them, packing up a small bag of her remedies and ointments.  Maybe these humans are different.  They didn’t throw stones at her or burn her garden.  Spit at her in disgust or raise their spears in her direction.  She pats Peter on the head and tells him to watch the cottage while she’s gone.  He nearly tips over, he waves so energetically as she goes.

~*~*~

_“I’m sorry, I don’t have the power to deal with curses.  I have knowledge of medicinal herbs and bit of magic craft, but not to the extent of breaking a death curse.”_

Sorceresses are stupid, Eli thinks as she angrily throws a stone into the river. Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it.  She came all this way to meet an actual sorceress and it turns out that said sorceress wasn't much of one.  She couldn’t even make a proper golem.  To make matters worse, the sorceress had fed her these little cakes with honey. And tea.  Eli had never tasted anything so nice before.  Stupid and nice aren’t very good combinations, she thinks.

Eli sighs and heads back to the cottage.  Sorceress Beth says that Thursdays are pie days and Eli has never gotten around to tasting pie before. Eli stops when she hears the jangle of harnesses and the sound of horses.  She promptly crouches low in the undergrowth, peering around shrub branches and leaves to see Beth riding off with some armored soldiers.  They’re wearing the castle’s emblem on their chest. 

~*~*~

Of course it was a trap.  Humans couldn’t be trusted. They accused her of treachery against a Royal family she didn’t even know existed. “Don’t worry, we’ll make good use of you here.”  Here being this dingy, dusty room in a stone tower.

Beth sits up abruptly when a dull clang and a muted curse comes from the barred window in the right corner of prison.  She throws back the thin, linen sheet and quickly tip-toes over chilly wooden floor.  She presses her face up against the icy iron rods set into mortar and stone, and peers into the darkness. There’s a movement just barely out of her line of sight. 

“Beth, hold on!” another harsh whisper and then something is clumsily clambering through the bars.  Beth calls a tiny witchlight, letting it hover in front her below the window ledge so that the guards won’t see.  It bobs there like a miniature, ghostly green sun.

Her heart lightens at the sight of a tiny golem squeezing himself through the window, leaving small footprints and streaks of wet clay in his tracks. “Peter,” she breathes, cradling her small creation in her hands.  “How did you get here, who-“

A pale hand clamps on to one of the window’s bars and Eli grunts, heaving herself up.  Beth starts at the sight of her, eyes wide as the witchlight dimly illuminates her features.  The cursed human girl?  Eli digs into her pockets with her other hand and roughly shoves a handful of assorted bruised clippings in her direction.  Beth recognizes them from her garden.

“I remember you saying that you need these to make sleep smoke but not how much so I just grabbed what I could. Oh, and little Peter too, since he insisted on coming.”  Peter mutely waves a stubby arm. Eli swipes her hand on her trousers and grins, eyes gleaming in that dark, moonless night.  She gives Beth a jaunty, little salute, “We’re here to save you, Lady Sorceress.”

Eli tells Beth that the guard rotation would begin soon, as she separates the herbs into the correct proportions. “I’ll throw those leafy bits into the fire as soon as I get down.  That’ll give you enough time, yeah?” Eli shuffles slightly on the ledge and winces at the sound of grinding stone and mortar beneath her feet.  They hold their breaths and listen, but there’s no sign of anyone having heard. “The next rotation won’t be for another two hours after,” she continues.

“Yes, it’ll only take about half an hour to feel the effects.  But Eli, do be careful.”  Beth folds the herbs into a small handkerchief and passes it back through the bars.  “Don’t get caught and don’t breathe in the smoke for too long or else you’ll fall asleep too.” 

Eli smiles, “I won’t”, slips the cloth into her pocket and begins her descent, fingers gripping invisible crevices in the grooves of the tower’s stone body.  Beth watches with bated breath until Eli’s head disappears from view.  Peter pats her thumb reassuringly. 

The first hint that something isn’t right is when everything becomes silent.  The crickets aren’t chirping, Beth realizes.  Then there’s the sound of the guards crashing to the courtyard cobblestones in a clatter of metal instead of the expected soft thumps of people drowsily falling asleep.  The fog outside thickens. Fog? She jumps, flinching when the guards outside her door fall to the ground with a loud thunk.  Beth wonders if this is her chance to escape.

There’s a moment of silence before it swings open to reveal a thick wall of lilac smoke that collapses in the door’s absence and tumbles into the room like a flood.  Beth hurriedly throws the bed sheet over her nose and mouth in alarm.  Eli stumbles through the doorway, nearly tripping over a guard’s prone figure. She grabs Beth’s hand and they dash down the tower’s stairs, footsteps pounding against stone and grit. Eli saves her triumphant whoop for after they manage to flee the castle walls.  She laughs as the “borrowed” horse beneath them shakes his head and gallops back towards the woods. 

“What on earth was that, Eli!” Beth demands, gripping Eli’s arms around her waist and bouncing uncomfortably as the horse slows to a trot. It gave her shivers, thinking back to the sight of the entire grounds shrouded in a lilac haze with the figures of everyone having apparently dropped where they stood. There was no way that small handkerchief of herbs could fill the entire tower with smoke like that.  She tells Eli as much and tacks on that it would have taken nearly her entire supply, both fresh and dried, to make that much sleep smoke.

“Well…I did tell you that I grabbed what I could?”

Beth turns to stare at Eli’s in disbelief.  “I thought you meant what you could fit in your pocket!”  Eli’s shoulders raise slightly as she hunches forward, ears turning red at the tips.

“I didn’t think it’d be that strong! And it worked, didn’t it?  We got you out-”

“They didn’t fall asleep, Eli, they fell unconscious!”

~*~*~

Eli is twelve when she makes an agreement with Sorceress Beth.  In return for saving her from Royal captivity, Beth will try and find a solution for the death curse.  It seems that this works in both their favors since the Royal family is now after both of them.  Eli is in favor of turning them all into toads but is outvoted by both Beth and Peter.  That little traitor.

“Where should we head first?” Eli asks, tossing a grape into the air and catching it in her mouth. Beth had told her that if the curse can’t be erase through magical means, then they’d have to try to find a more practical solution.  If they manage to find something deadly enough to kill her, the curse would be negated.  This idea was met with much excitement on Eli’s part, mostly because of the revelation that she was essentially immortal until the curse scheduled day of her death.

Beth peers closely at a map that Eli had filched from the castle. “Hmm, let’s head west.  They should have some relatively deadly species of fungus in the Elkmoore grove.”

~*~*~

Beth furiously flings herself at Eli, who is gleefully cackling at the rough caricature of the “evil sorceress” on the wanted poster.  Eli dances out of reach, tears the poster from the post, rolls it up, and hastily crams it into the pack on her back before taking off down the path.

“How dare you?!” Beth splutters, irritably shoving disheveled hair out her flushed face and chasing after her companion.  “You-You impudent girl!”

Eli calls over her shoulder, “It’s not my fault. I didn’t draw it!”

It’s been a year since their escape from the Royal family’s grasp.  Of course, this was a major blow to the Royal pride and a huge threat to their reign of power.  Eli and her were fugitives, Beth supposed.  How troublesome.  This was why it was better when she didn’t associate with humans.

Especially little fledgling humans like Eli that don’t understand of the concept “think before you leap”. She tells Peter as much and he tilts his little clay head back to stare at her.  It’s a terribly judgmental stare and she says “Stop giving me that look.  I’ll have you know that this is all horrible and not fun in the slightest.”

~*~*~

Eli is fifteen when she tells Beth that if the sorceress ever scared her like that again, she’d keel over and die of a heart attack, curse or no curse. Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it.  Beth mumbles something about bossy humans before falling back asleep.  Eli kneels there at Beth’s side, chest tight and eyes burning as she smooths back Beth’s bangs with trembling hands.  The fever has broken and although there is still a thin sheen of sweat, at least Beth is writhing in pain anymore.

Peter opens the flap of their small tent and brings in a fresh bowl of water. He pauses for a moment and then places the bowl gently on the floor before climbing into Eli’s lap and giving her a messy hug.  She pats his head but her gaze is still focused on the slow rise and fall of Beth’s chest. It was an accident.  She knows that but that didn’t stop Beth from nearly dying after Eli had forgotten that the colorful snacks and concoctions were truly deadly and a small bit had brushed against Beth’s exposed hand. Peter swipes at Eli’s cheeks and she stubbornly scrubs at it, telling him that she’s not crying.

~*~*~

They’re sitting by a campfire and Eli is practicing the alphabet with Peter.  Beth looks up from her journal and watches Eli grumble and scratch into the packed dirt with a stick.  Her hair now drapes, long and thick, reflecting the glow of the fire in its curls.  Beth makes a mental note to buy her a new dress.  She’s growing fast. There’s a small curl of unease in Beth’s gut at the thought of it.

An indignant bark of “Hey! Peter!” startles her out of her thoughts as the little golem rubs out Eli’s backwards P and shows her how to write it properly.

“Beth, how does Peter even know how to read and write?” she asks Beth, throwing her hands in the air. Peter patiently rubs out about half of the letters scraped into the dirt and corrects them all. 

Sixteen years old and she’s being taught by a four year old lump of clay with no brain.

Beth tells her that a golem is made with a piece of a soul.  So, to a certain extent, the golem reflects its contributor’s abilities and desires.  Eli asks if Beth is lonely and that’s why Peter is so affectionate.  She then winks and says that she’ll allow Beth to climb into her lap and embrace her if she so desires.  Beth splutters furiously and Eli gets a small pot of ink thrown at her head for such “vulgar, cheeky insolence”. Eli laughs and Peter draws a smiling face with his stick.  Beth calls Peter a dirty liar, “stop encouraging the girl”, and declares that she is going to sleep.

~*~*~

Eli notices that Beth never answered if she was lonely.  For all her haughty declarations about how troublesome humans were, Beth didn’t seem to really hate them.  She tells Eli about how this and that could kill whatever number of humans but then chooses to make them into medicine instead.  In last village they had come across, Beth’s hood had been swept back by a gust of wind and all could see her dark, sorceress black hair. 

“She’s trying to poison us all!”

They had managed to flee without much trouble, a few bruises here and there from thrown stones.  Beth had calmly told Eli that this was normal and she had carefully carried her bag to a nearby stream to clean out the stains from the rotten fruit and mud.  Peter had clung to Eli’s leg like a small child, trembling.

Eli is seventeen when she tells Peter that she is going to break Beth’s curse of loneliness.

~*~*~

“Are you sure about this, Eli?” Beth hesitates, eyeing the small boat with a critical eye. She steps on to the wooden planks and winces as it creaks ominously.  “Really?”

Eli rolls her eyes and pushes boat from shore with a grunt of “Yes, really.”  The boat bobs freely and she trudges through the shallow water, accepting Beth’s hand in clambering in.  There’s a pair of oars on the side and she rolls up her sleeves before grabbing them.

Beth’s face is as pale as the beeswax that she holds in hand as the rickety tubs bobs and sways in the ocean waves.  “Are you really really sure-“

“Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it.”  Eli grabs the mangled wax from her hands and gently cups Beth’s ears, carefully sealing the wax with smooth strokes of her thumbs.

The siren shoal turns out to be a bust, Eli doesn’t die, and Beth has itchy, flaking wax stuffed in her ears. That night, they lay side by side in the small fisherman’s boat with the moon a fingernail sliver in the black sky. The wooden walls around them are cramped and rough, and Eli’s loose limbs brand a hot line against Beth’s skin. Beth thinks how she’s going to miss this and her chest aches with the knowledge that three years may not be enough time. She tells herself that it’s the ocean spray that burns her eyes and makes her lips taste of salt.

~*~*~

Eli cradles Peter and whispers that he must make sure that Beth isn’t lonely when she’s gone.  There is only one more year until her twenty-first birthday. Beth has become ever more determined to find deadlier and deadlier thing. She gets this look on her face and grinds the tip of quill into the parchment of her grimoire in her haste when recording new information. She desperately tells Eli that they’ll manage, they’ve done so much and come so far that surely there’s nothing but a few things left that would surely break the curse. 

Eli thinks back to the days where Beth would make her daisy chains, “A member of Royalty should have a proper crown,” and chase her through sweet meadows, her long black hair streaming behind her as the sorceress laughs breathlessly while scolding the girl for whatever mischief she had gotten into. Eli had once hoped that maybe this would be one of those stories where everyone lives happily ever after but now she hopes that Beth will have someone to tell her it’s not her fault that they simply ran out of time.

~*~*~

Beth and Eli crouch in the underbrush with shallow breaths.  Eli’s grip on Beth’s hand hurts, she can almost feel the bones grinding against one another but she bets that her grip on Eli’s hand is just as strong.  Lantern lights bob close by.  The sorceress hunts have suddenly picked up again what with Eli’s twenty-first rapidly approaching and it’s taken its toll on the both of them.  They’ve been running and hiding for the past two months and the bags beneath Beth’s eyes are carved deeper and deeper.  She doesn’t know what’s worse, the fear of getting caught and killed or knowing that Eli is going to die this year and she can’t do anything to stop both of them from happening.

There’s a small, isolated town in the far north that they manage to reach on shaky legs and tired eyes.  They find a shady inn that doesn’t ask too many questions. Eli watches Beth comb her hair by the candlelight.  Peter is quiet and still.  Eli wonders if it’s a testament to how exhausted Beth is or if a different desire besides sleep. The bed dips as Beth crawls into bed and blows out the candle.  There’s a small pool of moonlight from the single square window and the muted voices of other patrons in the tavern below the floorboards.  Beth’s hair is dark against the stark whiteness of the pillow.  Eli feels the bed shiver and throws an arm over Beth’s shoulder, drawing her close like how they would sleep in the frozen, snowy towns when she was fifteen.  There’s a warm trickle of tears against Eli’s collarbone and Beth quivers with the effort of holding her sobs in check.

“Are you crying?” Eli teases her. “You’ll ruin your youthful looks.”

Beth’s retort is wet and nasally. “I most certainly am not!” She most certainly is.  Eli laughs, though it’s a bit hollow. She can feel Beth’s lips curl slightly against her skin. They lay there with half tangled limbs, undone hair and unspoken words that they can’t bring themselves to say out loud in that tiny, cheap room with flimsy walls and a square moon. Beth’s breathing slows and Eli burns the image into her mind, carves the sensation of this warmth into her flesh so that she won’t falter. 

~*~*~

Beth wakes up to raucous cheers and an empty bed.  There’s slight lilac haze. “Eli?” There’s a bottle of dye in the basin by the door.  Peter is holding something.  Her throat tightens.  “Eli?”

~*~*~

_Long, silky, black hair.  A bright, red ribbon tied around a straw hat._   Eli is shoved roughly to her knees, splinters biting into and breaking skin as her captors display her on the wooden execution platform _.  Long fingers wrapping daisy chains around her head and thick lashes that butterfly kiss her cheeks._   It’s hard to breathe with a burlap sack over her head.

~*~*~

Beth is frantically shoving herself through the mass of people clamoring to see the public execution of the traitorous sorceress who had been caught this morning.  She is nearly bowled over by a particularly enthusiastic man, his shoulder slamming her into another fellow who bellows for the executioner to get on with it.  Beth desperately crams herself through tiny gaps in the crowd, making her way to the stage. The paper crumpled in her hand says “Forever and a day. Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it.” and is smeared with wet clay from when she took it from Peter’s hand.

_~*~*~_

_Honey cakes and tea_.  Eli inhales deeply as the sack is roughly wrenched off of her head and the roar of a blood frenzied crowd of onlookers fills her ears.  It’s a beautiful day.  There are no clouds in the sky and there’s a man dressed in black with an axe in his hand.  _A warm breath on her collarbone.  The scratch of a quill against parchment. Amber eyes._   Happy birthday.

~*~*~

_“It’s okay, my birthday isn’t for another week. We have time.”_

Beth sobs, her breath catching in her throat and she claws her way past onlookers. 

_“It’s okay.” Eli tugs a lock of Beth’s hair and smiles, a smudge of clay on her cheek_

This wasn’t right.  No.  Eli is immortal.  She can’t die.  It’s not her birthday.  It’s not time. Eli wouldn’t lie.  She wouldn’t.   She wouldn’t be that cruel and heartless and utterly-

Human.

The crowd’s screams swallow hers.  They swallow her voice, her tears, they swallow her beating heart and her dazzling sun as they drink in the sight of the sorceress’ head held up by her long, thick, curly black hair.

~*~*~

“Lady Beth, you have two more orders for the ballroom dolls.”  Jargon places a new folder on her workbench. A shard of steward’s soul glows softly in his chest. She motions for him to sit down when she sees the hair line crack on the back of his hand.  It was hard making golems dry enough to avoid leaving smears and smudges everywhere they went without having their topmost layer crack from lack of moisture.  She paints on a new layer of refined clay.

“Mr. Grant is also here at the front door,” he says.  “He wishes to speak with you.”

“Turn him away.  I don’t talk to humans.” Beth pats Jargon’s hand dry and the obediently golem leaves.  Peter peeks around the leg of her workbench.  Just like a century ago, he’s lumpy, constantly damp, toddling around like a clumsy marionette.  The only difference now is that he has a small, crooked mouth that she gave him a few years after…after she decided that life was just a little too quiet. He pokes her ankle and she sighs, “They’re vile things. I hate them.” I hate her.

Peter’s mouth opens and closes wordlessly. She eyes him and says, “Yes, really.”

He gives a lopsided frown.  Are you sure?

“Of course, I’m sure!” Beth slams her hands on her workbench, sending her tools clattering and papers to the floor.  Hateful humans and their lies and trickery and cruel cruel smiles as they brush your bangs out of your eyes and proudly show off their backwards B’s and leaving without saying-

“Ab-solute…ly?”

Beth freezes, knuckles white and she stops breathing. Peter opens his mouth again.

“Pos…it-itively…”

_To a certain extent, Eli, it shares similar abilities as the soul it contains._   Beth covers her eyes and slowly sinks to her knees.  She’s not going to cry.  Not over some human girl.

“N-No doubt,” Peter pats her leg, wet clay slick and icy against her skin. “Ab-bout it it?”

_And to certain degree, the soul’s desires._

Beth tries to breathe, to fill collapsed lungs and tell him to be _shut up_ but her voice isn’t working right.  A hundred years of trying to forget, of remembering “Forever and a day” and telling herself _I don’t want to hear it_.  A hundred years of hardening her heart like the clay she fires furiously in her kiln. A hundred years of silent Peter, voiceless Peter unable to say a word. 

A hundred years of cruel blue, cloudless skies.

A single night of square moon in a dingy room.

_I want to hear your voice again._


End file.
